ADELAIDE WRITERS’ WEEK
27th FEBRUARY – 4th MARCH 2021 
adelaidefestival.com.au

Jo Dyer
DIRECTOR, ADELAIDE WRITERS’ WEEK 

Since we packed up the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden in March 2020, our world has been transformed by a pandemic that rages across continents and demographics, wreaking havoc on our health, economies and confidence. The ground shifted beneath us as we scrambled to comprehend this silent, invisible, potentially deadly new foe, to develop strategies to combat it and understand its implications. In a world already struggling with polarised politics, divided communities and the existential threat of climate change, being forced to confront a health crisis of this magnitude felt exhausting, unconscionable, unbelievable. For some, unsurvivable. We are on unstable ground. Adelaide Writers’ Week was the last literary festival to squeak in before the Great Lockdowns of 2020. We are among the first to return live in 2021. It won’t quite be business as usual – most notably, our international guests aren’t able to be with us in person so will instead join us in the Garden via livestream. COVID safety protocols will also be implemented across the site, including a requirement for all attendees to scan into the Garden, so we encourage you to arrive early for your preferred events. We have some great new programs – the Plane Tree Stage is now active across the week featuring series for the writers amongst you on The Business of Being a Writer and promoting advocacy and activism with Be the Change. For the first time, you can access some of our events from your own homes in our Curated Dozen. We note, too, that the incomes of artists and arts workers have been slashed over the last twelve months, including many of our authors, as their live events, part-time teaching roles and casual day jobs evaporated. We therefore encourage you to support them – and us! – by buying up big at the Book Tent this year, including the books of those authors who can’t be with us in person. Amongst the tumult and challenges of the year that’s been, we are thrilled, relieved and inspired that we will be able to come together again in the Garden to ask the big questions – what just happened? What happens next? If it only happened on Zoom, did it really happen at all? – and immerse ourselves in the healing power of literature.
Acknowledgement of Country

Ngadlu tampinthi, Kaurna Miyurna yaitya yarta-mathanya Wama Tarntanyaku. Ngadlu tampinthi purkarna pukinangku, yalaka, tarrkarritya. Parnaku yailtya, parnaku tapa purruna, parnaku yarta ngadlu tampinthi. Yalaka Kaurna Miyurna parnaku yailtya, tapa purruna, yarta kuma puru martinthi, puru warri-apinthi, puru tangka martulayinthi. 
We acknowledge the Kaurna people are the traditional custodians of the Adelaide Plains and pay respects to Elders past, present and future. We recognise and respect their cultural heritage, beliefs and relationship with the land. We acknowledge that they are of continuing importance to the Kaurna people living today.

Welcome
The Hon Steven Marshall MP 
PREMIER OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA 
MINISTER FOR THE ARTS
After a year like no other, Adelaide Writers’ Week presents a welcome opportunity to spend six glorious days in the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden in Adelaide’s beautiful Park Lands. Both writers and audiences will once again come together to enjoy this jewel in the Adelaide Festival crown – a 61 year old celebration of reading, writing, stories and ideas. Year-on-year, Adelaide Writers’ Week attracts both national and international writers and even in these strangest of times, we will be seeing international writers gracing our Writers’ Week stages – but this time streamed live from their home countries direct to our audiences in the Garden. Amongst myriad other program highlights, the weekend for younger readers and writers returns again this year over two brilliant, jam-packed days. The State Government has always been a strong supporter of Adelaide Writers’ Week and we hope to continue this partnership long into the future. I congratulate Director Jo Dyer for once again delivering a diverse and engaging program. I look forward to seeing you there.

Judy Potter 
CHAIR, ADELAIDE FESTIVAL
Adelaide Writers’ Week is back. Adelaide Writers’ Week will be amongst the first literary festivals to return live in 2021, and Jo Dyer’s third as Director. Although returning audiences will notice some changes, the essence of Adelaide Writers’ Week remains. Audiences will still gather in the wonderful setting of the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden and there will be international authors, albeit via livestream but nonetheless still in the moment, and connected. Adelaide Writers’ Week continues to be proudly presented as a free event, and this is only possible through the support of government, our corporate partners, and also our growing group of philanthropic partners especially through our donor circle, The Literati. Thank you. Thank you also to the Adelaide Festival and Writers’ Week team, led by Jo, for your work in delivering this year’s program. See you all in the Garden.

COVID INFO

COVID Safe Adelaide Writers’ Week will be operating under an approved COVID Management Plan. To ensure your safety during the age of COVID, 2021 will see some changes to the operation of the Writers’ Week site. Please check our website on the day to guarantee you have the most up to date information. Key things to note: BE EARLY: To facilitate contact tracing and monitor numbers on site on arrival at the Garden each day a COVID-Safe Check-in is required. This may cause delays at peak times. If you do not have a smart phone, Writers’ Week staff can register you manually. BE CASHLESS: We strongly recommend all purchases in the Book Tent and catering outlets are made by card. BE SAFE: Maintain physical distancing and make liberal use of our on-site hand sanitiser.
Breakfast With Papers
Sat 27 Feb – Sun 14 Mar, 8am
Adelaide Festival Summerhouse

The perfect start to your Festival day kicks off at 8am at The Summerhouse. Join Tom Wright and a panel of informed guests in stimulating conversations about the news of the day and the big issues, with newspapers provided by The Advertiser. Whether you’re on your way to work or jogging in the parklands, stop by for a coffee and a completely natural brain booster. 
For more information visit adelaidefestival.com.au 
Duration	1 hr 
Access	Wheelchair accessible
Tickets	Free
Where	The Summerhouse Adelaide Festival Centre Amphitheatre, enter 			from Elder Park

Festival Forums
1 – 5 Mar & 9 – 12 Mar, 12.30pm
Adelaide Festival Summerhouse

Explore the Festival experience through the eyes of its artists: directors, creatives and performers as they delve into unmissable behind-the-scenes conversations with host David Marr. Podcasts will be available after each event for those who can’t attend in person, but being in The Summerhouse pavilion under the trees of Elder Park while listening to these conversations is... just a different story. For more information visit adelaidefestival.com.au
Duration	1 hr 
Access	Wheelchair accessible
Tickets	Free
Where	The Summerhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre Amphitheatre, enter 			from Elder Park

Breakfast With Papers and Festival Forums talks will continue rain or shine. In the case of extreme weather refer to adelaidefestival.com.au at 4pm the day before for final weather arrangements.

Curated Dozen
Streamed live from our Place to Yours
For the first time, Writers’ Week gives you the opportunity to experience some of our events from the comfort of your own home. Exploiting the COVID-related presence of screens and cameras in the Garden required to stream in our international guests, we have curated a series of twelve sessions that can be viewed online at home across the week. Tickets for the Curated Dozen, that include many of our headline authors as well as some of our more provocative and inspiring discussions, must be purchased in advance. Events can then be viewed live from their scheduled start for up to 48 hours thereafter. 
Tickets are available on a Pay What You Can basis, with a recommended minimum price of $15 per event, with anything more gratefully received as generous support of Adelaide Writers’ Week during these challenging times for the arts.
Events
THE VIRUS IS HERE Emily St. John Mandel and Laura Jean McKay
Saturday 10:45am
KNOW HER PLACE Kate Manne
Saturday 12pm
HAMNET Maggie O’Farrell
Sunday 9:30am
THE FUTURE IS NOW William Gibson
Sunday 2:30pm
WHITHER AUSTRALIAN LEADERSHIP? Katharine Murphy and Laura Tingle
Sunday 3:45pm
THE RISE OF INDEPENDENT MEDIA Peter Fray, Margaret Simons and Michael West
Tuesday 2:30pm
QUIVERING ON THE CUSP Naoise Dolan and Jessie Tu
Wednesday 9:30am
WHAT ARE YOU GOING THROUGH? Sigrid Nunez
Wednesday 12pm
TWILIGHT OF DEMOCRACY Anne Applebaum
Wednesday 12pm
LAND OF MATES AND FAVOURS Richard Denniss, Cameron Murray and Marian Wilkinson
Wednesday 2:30pm
REFRAMING THE CLASSICS Natalie Haynes
Thursday 9:30am
THE LONELY CENTURY Noreena Hertz
Thursday 5pm
For more details and to book your tickets, please head to www.adelaidefestival.com.au/writers-week
The streamed events featuring Anne Applebaum, William Gibson, Maggie O’Farrell and Arundhati Roy are presented in partnership with The Wheeler Centre.

Saturday 
27th February

East Stage 9:30am

THE MUSIC ADVANTAGE 
Anita Collins
In her book, The Music Advantage: How Learning Music Helps Your Child’s Brain and Wellbeing, Dr Anita Collins outlines the remarkable and surprising benefits that playing – or even just appreciating – music offers children. An expert in cognitive development and passionate music educator, Anita visited classrooms and leading music and neurological research labs around the world to investigate the extraordinary impact music can have on the development of young brains. The Music Advantage is the impressive result.

Chair: Hannah Critchlow

West Stage 9:30am

INCREMENTAL LOSS
Kate Mildenhall
“The world shifted slowly, then so fast, while they watched but didn’t see.” 
In Kate Mildenhall’s compulsive The Mother Fault, Mim’s comfortable, micro-chipped life in suburban Melbourne and her assumptions about the neutrality of the omniscient Department are upended when her husband Ben goes missing while working in Indonesia.   Set in a near future and very recognisable Australia, The Mother Fault is at once a literary thriller, a family drama and a riveting exploration of the consequences of a passive population and the costs – and rewards – of fighting back. 

Chair: Cath Kenneally
East Stage 10:45am

WATSONIA
Don Watson
With wit, wisdom and endless curiosity, Don Watson has spent a lifetime writing on subjects as diverse as they are entertaining. This definitive anthology reveals the remarkable depth of his interests and erudition, with articles, essays and insights on subjects ranging from Australian humour, American politics, Don Bradman and Oscar Wilde. Speechwriter, humorist, biographer, lecturer, critic and provocateur, selfdescribed accidental writer Don has traversed almost as many genres of writing as he has subjects: Watsonia: A Writing Life is a collection of his wide-ranging best.

Chair: Tom Wright

West Stage 10:45am

THE VIRUS IS HERE 
PANDEMICS IN FICTION
Emily St. John Mandel LIVE STREAMED FROM NEW YORK, USA and Laura Jean McKay
As the Lockdowns of 2020 began, Laura Jean McKay’s story of a world collapsing in the midst of a viral epidemic, The Animals in That Country, seized the popular imagination: a hallucinogenic tale of Zoo Flu with wild symptoms that enable inter-species communication. Emily St. John Mandel’s break-out novel Station Eleven is a gripping, eerie story of civilisation’s collapse in the wake of a flu that wipes out 99% of the world’s population. It sold nearly two million copies worldwide. Both are prescient, terrifying and ultimately hopeful.

Chair: Sophie Cunningham

East Stage 12pm
HOMELAND ELEGIES
Ayad Akhtar LIVE STREAMED FROM NEW YORK, USA
Described by Richard Flanagan as the “best American novel I’ve read in years”, Pulitzer Prize-winner Ayad Akhtar’s Homeland Elegies combines memoir and essay, fact and fiction to deliver a tour de force.  How, his narrator asks, can he “express the complex, often contradictory alchemy at work in translating experience into art?”.  This powerful, courageous and extraordinarily timely work is his answer, exploring not just the state of contemporary America in the Trump era, and the relationship between East and West, but searing questions of identity, family and art. 

West Stage 12pm

KNOW HER PLACE
The Philosophy of Misogyny and Male Entitlement
Kate Manne LIVE STREAMED FROM NEW YORK, USA
Misogyny is the “law enforcement arm of patriarchy” that polices and punishes “bad women” who threaten male dominance, argues philosopher Kate Manne in Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women then outlined the illegitimate sense of entitlement that enables men to grasp power and authority for themselves, and demand emotional and physical care from women. Described as “the Simone de Beauvoir of the 21st Century”, Kate offers a radical new framework through which to understand misogyny.

Chair: Clare Wright

East Stage 1:15pm

WOMEN AND LEADERSHIP
Julia Gillard
The message from Julia Gillard and her coauthor, former Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, to young female aspirants to public life in Women and Leadership: Real Lives, Real Lessons is “Be aware, not beware!”. Containing interviews with eight impressive world leaders, including Hillary Clinton, Christine Lagarde and Jacinda Ardern, and drawing on the results of research and global surveys conducted by Julia’s London-based Global Institute for Women’s Leadership, Women and Leadership provides an important and comprehensive analysis of the contemporary role of gender in access to and perceptions of leadership.

Chair: Jo Dyer

West Stage 1:15pm

SUBURBAN DREAMING
Geoff Goodfellow and Christopher Raja
The suburb looms large in the physical and imaginary landscape of this country, a loaded repository of hopes and aspirations. In his long anticipated memoir, Out of Copley Street: A Working Class Boyhood, Geoff Goodfellow deploys clear lucid prose to describe the South Australian suburbs that forged him. Christopher Raja was eleven when he settled in the Melbourne suburbs, a world away from the teeming streets of Kolkata from whence he came. He describes the culture shock and the life he built in Into the Suburbs: A Migrant’s Story.

Chair: Royce Kurmelovs

East Stage 2:30pm

THE GOLDEN MAZE
Richard Fidler
In Richard Fidler’s love letter to the city of Prague, The Golden Maze: A Biography of Prague, he describes it as a city “written in pencil, erased, rewritten and erased again... a fabulous palimpsest of stories.” Richard interweaves his own visits, experiences and impressions of Prague with its broader history, giving us a brilliant living portrait of a city of fairy tales, violent crusades and dark secrets. His passion and love for the city infuse the pages of a book that captures its very essence.

Chair: Michael Williams

West Stage 2:30pm

PARWANA 
BECOMING AN ADELAIDE ICON
Durkhanai Ayubi
Parwana Afghan Kitchen opened in Adelaide in 2009 with a vision to share Afghan cuisine and culture. It swiftly became a beloved part of the city, attracting national acclaim for its food and welcoming atmosphere. In Parwana: Recipes and Stories from an Afghan Kitchen, Durkhanai Ayubi tells of her family’s journey from Afghanistan to Adelaide. Her mother’s recipes are interwoven with vivid stories of a homeland of rich histories, generous hospitality, and the celebration of the ritual of preparing and sharing food.

Chair: Collette Snowden

East Stage 3:45pm

GHOST SPECIES
James Bradley
An Elon Musk-style billionaire persuades scientist Kate Larkin to join his secretive new project. Its ambitious aim is to re-engineer our collapsing climate by resurrecting long extinct species, including our closest human relatives, the Neanderthals. James Bradley’s Ghost Species is both a compulsive page-turner and book of big ideas: a deft examination of scientific, corporate and personal ethics in our endangered world and an intimate and affecting account of love, motherhood and what it means to be human.

Chair: Nicole Abadee

West Stage 3:45pm

THE DRAGONS AND THE SNAKES 
David Kilcullen
Soldier-scholar David Kilcullen is Australia’s most influential contemporary military strategist. A former adviser to General Petraeus and former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, his new book, The Dragons and the Snakes: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West, examines the complex new world of modern warfare, featuring the state competitor “dragons” and the non-state guerrilla and terrorist players, the “snakes.” A remarkable synthesis of three decades of military and political history, this expert analysis of the new nature of conflict is as illuminating as it is disturbing.

Chair: Rick Sarre

East Stage 5pm

ALL OUR SHIMMERING SKIES
Trent Dalton
Trent Dalton’s dazzling debut, Boy Swallows Universe, became the fastest selling Australian fiction debut ever, selling over half a million copies in Australia alone. His highly anticipated follow up, All Our Shimmering Skies, is set in Darwin in 1942 and is a sweeping mythological odyssey of love and adventure, magical and masterfully imaginative, populated by a Dickensian cast of finely drawn colourful characters, led by gravedigger’s daughter Molly Hook, a tenacious spirit as full of heart and hope as the novel she inhabits.

Chair: Anton Enus

West Stage 5pm

SAVING LIVES, ONE CHOICE AT A TIME
Christine Jackman and Rick Morton
What changes do we need to make in our lives to get the lives we want to live? Spurred by a sense of something lacking in their own lives, Rick Morton and Christine Jackman step out of their comfort zones to find out. In My Year of Living Vulnerably, Rick Morton describes his journey into love after a diagnosis of Complex PTSD. Despite its outward trappings of success, Christine Jackman’s life felt off kilter and unrewarding. She recounts her efforts to reclaim peace in Turning Down the Noise: The Quiet Power of Silence in a Busy World.

Chair: Natasha Cica

West Stage 6:15pm

(RE)LAUNCH: LIVE AND LOCAL!
Patrick Allington, Katherine Tamiko Arguile, Durkhanai Ayubi, Danielle Clode, Royce Kurmelovs, Rachael Mead, Pip Williams, Karen Wyld
Across the COVID-plagued year that was 2020, many of the great South Australian authors featured at this year’s Writers’ Week had to pivot to online launches, with celebratory glasses raised only virtually and individually as their books began their journeys in the world. 
The Zoom launch was a useful substitute… but not quite the same. 
To compensate in some small way, we invite you to join us to celebrate the wonderful array of South Australian books that missed out on in-person launches in 2020, as we re-launch 8 great works from 8 fantastic local authors from this year’s Writers’ Week program. From memoir, to debut novels, to sly satire, to magic realism, to investigative reporting and more – help give this diverse and compelling range of books their moment in the spotlight by joining us for (Re)launch: Live and Local! as we shake our fist at Covid and 2020 and celebrate great South Australian writing – in person!

Sunday 
28th February

WRITING FOR PERFORMANCE 
On the Plane Tree Stage

SEE ME THROUGH MY HANDS, 11:30am
The festival’s premiere storytelling event that places Deaf creativity at the forefront is back! This year we showcase four new writers performing in Auslan to show you the world through their hands. Join us for an energetic and powerful performance with some of Adelaide’s best new storytellers - Sofia Borick, Kate Frost, Samantha Wilson and Kirk O-Meara Presley.

FIRST WORDS, 1pm
Join a stellar lineup of South Australian First Nations writers Mandy Brown, Ali Cobby Eckerman, Natalie Harkin, Dominic Guerrera, Steven Pappin, Celestine Rowe, and MC Edoardo Crismani, and experience the depth and power of language in verse. With celebrated award-winning poets and some of the best emerging voices, First Words is an unmissable event in spoken word performance. Presented by Writers SA.

HEAR ME ROAR! 2:30pm
Join us for two hours of exhilarating and inspiring spoken word performance showcasing poets invigorating our local and national stages, including Australian Slam Poetry Champions Ren Alessandra and Jesse Oliver, SA standout Slammers Chris Jaksa and Olenka Toroshenko,middle  plus Hadley and Rameen Hayat.

East Stage 9:30am

HAMNET
Maggie O’Farrel LIVE STREAMED FROM LONDON, UK
Maggie O’Farrell’s award-winning Hamnet gives us new and illuminating insight into Shakespeare and his masterpiece, and the family that nurtured him. Told from the perspective of Shakespeare’s wife, this devastatingly beautiful novel takes as its starting point the true fact of the death of their 11 year old son, Hamnet (a variant on the more familiar Hamlet), and from there weaves a deeply moving story of family, love and, most profoundly, of grief, and the paths we must navigate through them.

Chair: Anton Enus

West Stage 9:30am

THE MEANING OF MONEY
Royce Kurmelovs and Rick Morton
Royce Kurmelovs’ finances were shredded when, uninsured, he hit another car. Rick Morton grew up in poverty, a household that struggled to afford birthday gifts and in which an unexpected bill could mean a choice between food and electricity. Royce’s Just Money: Misadventures in the Great Australian Debt Trap and Rick’s On Money are illuminating explorations of the debt industry and its shakedown of the poor and the desperate, and the strange moral meaning we – one of the most indebted nations in the world – ascribe to both the having and owing of money.

Chair: David Sly

East Stage 10:45am

PHOSPHORESCENCE
Julia Baird
After writing her best-selling book, Phosphorescence: On Awe, Wonder and Things That Sustain You When the World Goes Dark, Julia Baird said she hoped it would prove useful to “a few people going through an ‘In the Case of Emergency, Smash Glass’ kind of moment.” And then 2020 happened, and the world went dark for everyone. Part memoir, part cultural commentary, this intimate and inspiring book exhorts us to “reach for those tiny moments of stillness” as we search for the light within.

Chair: Nicole Abadee

West Stage 10:45am

HOW MUCH OF THESE HILLS IS GOLD?
C Pam Zhang LIVE STREAMED FROM SAN FRANCISCO, USA
Compared by The New York Times to Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and Steinbeck’s mighty The Grapes of Wrath, C Pam Zhang’s How Much of These Hills Is Gold? brilliantly reimagines both the American West and the Classic American Western. Longlisted for the Booker, it tells of Chinese American orphans Lucy and Sam’s quest through the Californian hills during the Gold Rush as they seek to bury the body of their father in a homeland that constantly tells them “this land is not your land.”

Chair: Mirandi Riwoe

East Stage 12pm

A BIGGER PICTURE
Malcolm Turnbull
When Malcolm Turnbull became Prime Minister in September 2015, Australians of all political persuasion breathed a sigh of relief that the hyperpartisan chaos of the Abbott Administration was over. They forgave him the way he claimed the top job in a way they never did Julia Gillard. Three years and one knife-edge election later, he too was gone. Malcolm talks to Don Watson about his journey to the top of Australian politics, what it is like to lead and to be so peremptorily dispatched, and what he makes of it all now.

Chair: Don Watson

West Stage 12pm

TROUBLE OF THE MIND 
MENTAL ILLNESS IN FICTION
Luke Horton and Meg Mason
The devastating effect of mental health afflictions and their impact on both the individual and their nearest and dearest is sensitively and sometimes hilariously explored by Meg Mason and Luke Horton in their respective novels, Sorrow and Bliss and The Fogging. Full of spiky wit and vivid observation, Sorrow and Bliss looks back on a wrecked marriage. The Fogging documents a relationship breakdown with pathos, documenting with prickly precision the anxiety that plagues our protagonist.

Chair: Jo Case

East Stage 1:15pm

THE WORLD OF WORDS
Sue Butler and Pip Williams
Pip Williams’ wonderful novel The Dictionary of Lost Words documents the origin of the Oxford Dictionary through the tale of the fictional Esme Nicoll, who observes how some words were valued more than others and seeks to rectify it. Sue Butler was Editor of the Macquarie Dictionary for decades, where she oversaw the inclusion of new words. Her new book is the highly entertaining Rebel Without a Clause: Losing the Linguistic Plot... Pip and Sue discuss the attraction and fluidity of language, and how dictionaries shape and reflect their times.

Chair: Victoria Purman

West Stage 1:15pm

MOTHERS AND SECRETS
Katherine Tamiko Arguile and Victoria Hannan
In Katherine Tamiko Arguile’s beautifully melancholic The Things She Owned, a visit from her cousin leads Erika to make sense of her fraught relationship with her dead mother through a treasured collection of artefacts and memories. In Victoria Hannan’s Kokomo, Mina’s mother, Elaine, has secrets too, which draw Mina back home from London on an urgent mission as Elaine ventures out of the house for the first time since the death of her father twelve years ago. These impressive debuts are moving and insightful meditations on love, grief and the ties that bind.

Chair: Kate Mildenhall

Supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund

East Stage 2:30pm

THE FUTURE IS NOW
William Gibson LIVE STREAMED FROM VANCOUVER, CANADA
The man who invented “cyberspace”, William Gibson is one of the most influential writers of our time. From his groundbreaking debut novel Neuromancer, to his latest bestseller Agency, he was the first to imagine a computer-saturated existence, grounded in an all-too-material world, and to anticipate its implications. The philosophies and practicalities of the near futures of his books stem from a deep and fascinated engagement with the present, as embodied in his most famous aphorism: “The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.”

Chair: James Bradley

West Stage 2:30pm

BENEVOLENCE
Julie Janson
Based on the oral histories of the Darug people, Julie Janson has said that her ambitious and illuminating new novel, Benevolence, was written as an Aboriginal response to The Secret River. Muraging – a character inspired by Julie’s own greatgreat-grandmother – is given over to the Native Institution as a pupil by her father, a “benevolent” institution providing Christian discipline and education, and thereby becomes the first person in the novel to be sacrificed to the good intentions of the waibala.

Chair: Caroline Baum

East Stage 3:45pm

WHITHER AUSTRALIAN LEADERSHIP?
Katharine Murphy and Laura Tingle
Two of our most incisive political analysts examine the state of leadership in Australia. Drawing on their recent Quarterly Essays, Laura Tingle (Follow the Leader – Democracy and the Rise of the Strongman QE71 and The High Road: What Australia Can Learn from New Zealand QE80) and Katharine Murphy (The End of Certainty: Scott Morrison and Pandemic Politics QE79) explore whether #scottyfrommarketing offers more than photo opportunities, if Albo missed his moment, and what we want and should demand from those who would lead us.

Chair: Sophie Black

West Stage 3:45pm

A ROOM MADE OF LEAVES
Kate Grenville
Kate Grenville’s latest novel A Room Made of Leaves continues the disruption of conventional colonial narratives that began with her acclaimed The Secret River. What if Elizabeth, wife of the colonial monster John Macarthur, left behind brutally frank secret memoirs, she asks? And they told the real story behind the myth of the 18th century wife? Playful and audacious, this astonishing literary achievement delves into history to examine the very contemporary issues of fake stories and hidden truths, and where stories originate.

Chair: Clare Wright

East Stage 5pm

THE LIVING SEA OF WAKING DREAMS
Richard Flanagan
One of Australia’s greatest writers and seer of our times, Booker Prize-winner Richard Flanagan’s The Living Sea of Waking Dreams describes the end of a family and the end of the world. Documenting the slow death of a matriarch in a Hobart hospital, and the tumult it causes amongst her children, this achingly sad but still hopeful novel deploys magical realism, black humour and Richard’s masterfully poetic prose to explore the way humanity loves, neglects and destroys itself and the beautiful world it inhabits.

Chair: Michael Williams

West Stage 5pm

OUR BODIES, THEIR BATTLEFIELD:
What War Does to Women
Christina Lamb LIVE STREAMED FROM LONDON, UK
“Rape”, writes Christina Lamb, one of the world’s foremost war correspondents who has worked in war and combat zones for over thirty years, “is the cheapest weapon known to man.” In her latest harrowing and profoundly moving book, Our Bodies, Their Battlefield: What War Does to Women, Christina documents the terrible crimes committed against women as an instrument of war. With its sensitive interviews with contemporary victims across many countries, and tenacious and empathetic reporting, Our Bodies, Their Battlefields writes women into the history of war.
Chair: Laura Grenfell

Monday 
1st March

East Stage 9:30am

WITNESS
AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE BRUTAL COST OF SEEKING JUSTICE
Louise Milligan
Born of Louise Milligan’s own brutal experience as a witness in the Cardinal Pell case, Witness is at once a gripping, powerful, meticulously researched critique of our criminal justice system, and an eloquent and empathetic argument for change. Including the accounts of victims retraumatised by their courtroom experience alongside expert opinions and analysis from legal practitioners - including defence counsel, prosecutors, judges and academics - Witness lays bare the flaws of our adversarial system, and the devastating impact they can have on the delivery of justice.

Chair: Natasha Cica

West Stage 9:30am

FUTURE AWRY
Patrick Allington and Dennis Glover 
In Patrick Allington’s Rise & Shine, an environmental apocalypse has wiped out most of the population. Those that survive are nourished – literally – by the consumption of violent footage from the perpetual war waged between the two city-states of Rise and Shine. In Dennis Glover’s Factory 19, a Walshian figure leads a willing cohort back to the future to an enclave in Tasmania, where they search for happiness in an industrialised past. Both books offer surreal and darkly satirical takes on leadership, humanity and the common good.

Chair: Geordie Williamson
East Stage 10:45am

THE TIME OF OUR LIVES 
GROWING OLDER WELL
Robert Dessaix
Robert Dessaix’s new book is an essential companion for those pondering how to age well, and cogitating on what life is all about anyway. The Time of Our Lives: Growing Older Well posits that a rich inner life is key to both and enables readers to share in Robert’s sharp, expansive, witty exploration of his own inner world. Reflecting on time, religion, painting, dancing, family and more, this is a wise and timely exploration of the challenges and possibilities of ageing.

Chair: Peter Rose

West Stage 10:45am

FIRST ON THE SCENE
Benjamin Gilmour and Rachael Mead
What inner strength is required when your working day is filled with injury, death and despair? Rachael Mead and Benjamin Gilmour can tell us. In The Application of Pressure, novelist Rachael Mead introduces us to paramedics Tash and Joel as they traverse the streets of Adelaide in their ambulance, saving lives and lost souls. Benjamin Gilmour documents his own experience as a paramedic on the frontline, first at infamous Sydney suicide spot The Gap: A Paramedic’s Summer on the Edge, and then further afield in Paramedico: Around the World by Ambulance.

Chair: Victoria Purman

East Stage 12pm

THE BELIEVER
ENCOUNTERS WITH LOVE, DEATH AND FAITH
Sarah Krasnostein
Sarah Krasnostein’s first book, The Trauma Cleaner, was a runaway bestseller and swept literary prizes nationally. Her new book is The Believer, an exploration of the power of belief. In it, she listens to the “human song of longing for the unattainable”, with each note in the song a story of unshakeable and often unfathomable faith. The stories are told to her by six extraordinary individuals – including Death Doulas, Ghostbusters, Creationists and survivors of domestic violence – individuals Sarah meets, follows, interrogates and seeks to understand in this profound and deeply compassionate book.

Chair: Rebecca Huntley

West Stage 12pm

HURRICANE SEASON
Fernanda Melchor LIVE STREAMED FROM SAN PUEBLA, MEXICO
A savage, violent howl of a book by one of Mexico’s most exciting writers, Fernanda Melchor’s Hurricane Season explores the deep misogyny and femicide of her country. The murder of the town “witch” is the book’s tragic centre, around which swirls streams of brutal, mesmerising, illuminating prose, each chapter told from the perspective of a different but always unreliable narrator. Shortlisted for the 2020 International Booker Prize, Hurricane Season is both a dark celebration of language and a powerful insight into a world of poverty, brutality and gore.

Chair: Claire Nichols

East Stage 1:15pm

THE INNER SELF
THE JOY OF DISCOVERING WHO WE REALLY ARE
Hugh Mackay
Hugh Mackay has made a lifelong study of the attitudes and behaviours of Australians, researching who we are, and why we behave as we do, for nearly sixty years. In his potent new book, The Inner Self, Hugh returns to his psychology roots and turns his gaze inwards, bypassing our socially constructed identities to explore our deeper, more private sense of self. He invites us to find a path to psychological freedom by answering that most challenging and confronting of questions: Who am I, really?

Chair: Natasha Mitchell

West Stage 1:15pm

READING
IMMERSION AND INSPIRATION
Debra Adelaide and Tegan Bennett Daylight
Debra Adelaide and Tegan Bennett Daylight have lived their lives immersed in books – as writers, editors, critics, teachers and, most importantly, as readers. In Debra’s The Innocent Reader: Reflections on Reading and Writing and Tegan’s The Details: On Love, Death and Reading, they reflect with candour and generosity on their love of reading, and the joy and fulfillment it offers them, exploring the deep emotional connection they have forged with the written word and the worlds it can contain.

Chair: Ashley Hay
Supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund

East Stage 2:30pm

MAX
Alex Miller
Dual Miles Franklin Award-winner Alex Miller’s latest book is a powerful excavation of the history of one of his closest friends and mentor, Max Blatt. From Melbourne’s Holocaust Centre to the Gestapo files of Berlin’s Federal Archives, and on to Poland and Israel, Alex feels his way through the silence with imagination, sensitivity and great love, on a quest to uncover the elusive truth of Max’s early years. The result is a moving, elegiac meditation on friendship, memory and history from one of our finest writers.

Chair: Tali Lavi

West Stage 2:30pm

THE MOUNTAINS SING 
Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai LIVE STREAMED FROM JAKARTA, INDONESIA
Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai’s The Mountains Sing is the epic, multigenerational tale of the Tran family, set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War. Spanning the French colonial period to the present day, we follow the lives of matriarch Diệu Lan and her granddaughter Huong. Diệu Lan tells Huong of Vietnam’s taboo on discussing “the wrongdoing of those in power, for they give themselves the right to rewrite history.” With luminous prose and a compelling immersive story, The Mountains Sing breaks that silence.

Chair: Caroline Baum

East Stage 3:45pm

HONEYBEE
Craig Silvey
After the blockbuster success of Jasper Jones, Craig Silvey’s highly anticipated new novel is Honeybee. Chronicling the coming of age of its transgender narrator, Sam, the story opens with Sam and another despairing soul standing on an overpass ready to end it all. Sam and Vic save each other and their tentative friendship gives them their first reason to live. Equal parts heartbreaking and heartwarming, Honeybee is a deeply empathetic novel of identity, vulnerability and masculinity

Chair: Yves Rees

West Stage 3:45pm

2021 MUD LITERARY 
Inaugurated by the passionate readers who comprise Adelaide’s MUD Literary Club – the only philanthropic organisation in the country exclusively supporting literature – the MUD Literary Prize has established an impressive pedigree over its short life. Founded in 2018 to celebrate a debut novel of literary fiction, past winners are Sarah Schmidt (See What I Have Done), Trent Dalton (Boy Swallows Universe) and Sienna Brown (Master of My Fate). Be the first to hear from the 2021 winner.

Chair: David Sly

East Stage 5pm

THE RATLINE 
LOVE, LIES AND JUSTICE ON THE TRAIL OF A NAZI FUGITIVE
Philippe Sands LIVE STREAMED FROM LONDON, UK
From the award winning author of the celebrated East West Street comes the real life thriller The Ratline, a mesmerising biography of a devoted husband, father and war criminal. The story of the life and mysterious death of Nazi leader turned fugitive Otto von Wächter, the richly detailed and beautifully crafted The Ratline draws on the family archives of Otto’s son and Philippe’s friend Horst to explore humanity’s capacity for love and evil, and ask if one can redeem the other.

Chair: Rick Sarre

West Stage 5pm

TRIBES AND TRIBULATIONS 
GROWING UP GAY
Shannon Molloy and Ronnie Scott
In his harrowing memoir, Fourteen: My Year of Darkness, and the light that followed, Shannon Molloy details the violence and fear he perpetually suffered growing up as an effeminate boy deep in regional Queensland. Ronnie Scott’s debut novel, The Adversary, is a sly, dry account of the inner-city world of endless student summers, cheap wine and Grindr; the like of which a young Shannon could only dream. How individuals cope and grow, and how this is reflected in worlds changing around them, is explored in these very different but equally engaging accounts of gay life in Australia.

Chair: Rick Morton

West Stage 6:30pm

AUTHORIAL VOICE 
LEAVING IT ALL ON THE PAGE
Hosted by Sami Shah, with Rick Morton, Yves Rees, Jessie Tu
Join broadcaster, author, comedian and host of 2021’s all-Australian Authorial Voice Sami Shah as he talks to a panel who are comfortable Leaving It All on the Page. Rick Morton (My Year of Living Vulnerably, One Hundred Years of Dirt), Yves Rees (winner of the 2020 Calibre Essay Prize) and Jessie Tu (A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing) sit down with Sami to debate the challenges, liberation and excruciating vulnerability of mining your own life and self for your writing.

Tuesday 
2nd March

East Stage 9:30am

THE DETAILS:
ON LOVE, DEATH AND READING
Tegan Bennett Daylight
Part memoir, part love letter to her favourite books and authors, Tegan Bennett Daylight’s first collection of essays, The Details: On Love, Death and Reading, evokes Blake’s observation that one can see “a World in a Grain of Sand.” The detail is the point, she writes. Drawing on noted authors including Jane Austen, George Saunders, S. J. Perelman and particularly Helen Garner, Tegan skillfully blends observations about writing and reading with recollections from her own life, from the profound to the everyday, to moving, inspiring and sometimes hilarious effect.

Chair: Geordie Williamson

West Stage 9:30am

THE RAIN HERON 
Robbie Arnott
Robbie Arnott burst on to the literary scene with his gloriously imaginative debut, Flames, a novel of stylistic ingenuity that traversed genres with dense poetic prose. His new book The Rain Heron is similarly inventive, the story of a mythic bird with extraordinary powers, able to save and destroy the land, both hunted and protected by flawed humans. With lush lyrical language, The Rain Heron is at once ecological parable and thriller, and an audacious, immersive work from one of Australia’s most original new talents.

Chair: Jane Howard
East Stage 10:45am

APEIROGON 
Colum McCann LIVE STREAMED FROM NEW YORK, USA
Colum McCann’s profoundly moving masterpiece, Apeirogon, is based on a true story of a friendship between “An Israeli, against the Occupation. A Palestinian, studying the Holocaust.” United by the devastation of losing a daughter to political violence, Bassam Aramin and Rami Elhanan together tell their daughters’ stories over and over, to anyone that will listen, in an attempt to bring a peaceful resolution to the endless conflict. Colum’s radically empathetic novel is infused with both desperate hope and poetic power.

Chair: Sophie Cunningham
Supported by Culture Ireland

West Stage 10:45am

TRUGANINI
Ian Anderson and Cassandra Pybus
Liberated from the tropes of tragedy that have dominated previous accounts, Cassandra Pybus’ biography of Nuenonne woman Truganini finally does justice to this remarkable woman. Posthumously and falsely named “the Last Tasmanian Aboriginal”, Truganini is revealed to be a woman of great strength, resilience and agency, a renowned swimmer, nimble negotiator, lover of nature and children, and master of adaptation. Inspired by her own family’s connection to Nuenonne country, Cassandra is joined by Ian Anderson to discuss Truganini’s life and legacy.

Chair: Paul Daley

East Stage 12pm

THE INSIDER 
Christopher Pyne
When his father died unexpectedly at 59, Christopher Pyne learned that life is short in the toughest possible way. He became a man in a hurry, and fought his way into Federal Parliament at the tender age of 25, knifing his erstwhile mentor to get there. A confidante to and tactician for multiple Prime Ministers, Christopher rose to become one of SA’s most powerful – and entertaining – political figures. In The Insider: The Scoops, the Scandals and the Serious Business Within the Canberra Bubble, he writes with verve, wit and candour about what Annabel Crabb calls “a truly bonkers period of political history.”

Chair: Sally Warhaft

West Stage 12pm

THE GLASS HOTEL
Emily St. John Mandel LIVE STREAMED FROM NEW YORK, USA 
Emily St. John Mandel’s exquisite new novel tells of the porous boundaries between past and present, rich and poor, living and dead. The Glass Hotel follows tough and beautiful Vincent, whose fall off a container ship into a storm-tossed ocean opens and closes the book, and of Jonathan, who whisks Vincent off into the “kingdom of money”, but whose wealth is a Bernie Madoff-esque mirage. With its intricate, interlocking narratives, and rich haunting prose, The Glass Hotel is a beguiling puzzle of a book that is a joy to solve.

Chair: Claire Nichols

East Stage 1:15pm

THE SHADOW KING
Maaza Mengiste LIVE STREAMED FROM NEW YORK, USA
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, The Shadow King is a powerful, poetic book about women soldiers during the Italian Ethiopian war of 1935, the first main conflict of World War II. Drawing on the life of Maaza’s own grandmother, it tells the story of Hirut, whose daring plan saves morale when Emperor Selassie goes into exile, only to end up a prisoner of one of Italy’s most brutal officers. A captivating study of female power with an indelible, inspirational heroine at its heart.

Chair: Linda Jaivin

West Stage 1:15pm

THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN THE WORLD
JULIAN ASSANGE AND WIKILEAKS’ FIGHT FOR FREEDOM
Andrew Fowler
Updated to include contemporary events of 2020, Andrew Fowler’s account of Julian Assange’s rise and fall is a damning indictment of the lengths to which Western Governments will go to keep their secrets. As Assange languishes in London’s maximum security Belmarsh prison, in The Most Dangerous Man in the World: Julian Assange and Wikileaks’ Fight for Freedom, Andrew documents how a computer hacker with a turbulent childhood became a journalist and America’s Public Enemy No 1, facing up to 175 years in prison for revealing the truth about the business of Government.

Chair: Rebecca Huntley

East Stage 2:30pm

THE RISE OF INDEPENDENT MEDIA
Peter Fray, Margaret Simons and Michael West
With over half a million Australians joining Kevin Rudd’s call for a Royal Commission into News Corp and the concentration of media power in this country, Australians are increasingly turning to other, more independent outlets for their news. Editor-in-Chief of veteran online newsletter Crikey! Peter Fray, independent journalist and media analyst Margaret Simons and founder of michaelwest.com.au, business writer Michael West discuss the rise of independent media and what we gain – and lose – from the increased proliferation of new media.

Chair: Paul Barclay

West Stage 2:30pm

LIFE AFTER TRUTH
Ceridwen Dovey
Five old friends on the cusp of middle age meet at their fifteen year Harvard reunion and wonder if they’re wasting or realising their potential. And then their erstwhile classmate, the President’s much despised son, turns up dead. With razor sharp wit and focus, the hugely enjoyable Life After Truth explores friendship, parenthood, success and fame, as it examines how we narrate the stories of our lives, and the gap between our inner selves and the persona we present to the world.

Chair: Tali Lavi

East Stage 3:45pm

RETURN TO ULURU
John Carty and Mark McKenna
When historian Mark McKenna set out to write a history of Uluru, he had no idea where the story would take him. Researching the shooting death of an Aboriginal man by policeman Bill McKinnon, Mark uncovered shocking evidence that was typical of Australian frontier justice, and astonishing in its contemporary resonance. With support from the families of key individuals, and the assistance of SA Museum, Mark uncovered critical new evidence, and Return to Uluru became a true crime story of the most explosive kind, and an important exploration of what truth telling and reconciliation means in practice.

Chair: Jared Thomas

West Stage 3:45pm

SHIFTING PERSPECTIVES
Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai LIVE STREAMED FROM JAKARTA, INDONESIA and Mirandi Riwoe
In Mirandi Riwoe’s award-winning Stone Sky Gold Mountain, we experience Australia’s Gold Rush through the eyes of Chinese immigrants Ying and Lai Yue as family circumstances force the two siblings to seek their fortune far from home. Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai’s The Mountains Sing recounts Vietnam’s dark history of colonialism and war from the perspective of its people rather than its invaders. These illuminating and engaging novels provide new perspectives on familiar stories in ways as refreshing as they are important.

Chair: Yves Rees

East Stage 5pm

THE PRICE OF FREE SPEECH
Malcolm Knox and Patrick Mullins
Do Australians extend the right of free speech only to those we agree with, saying things we approve of? In Truth is Trouble: The Strange Case of Israel Folau, or How Free Speech Became So Complicated, Malcolm Knox documents the curious case of how footballer Israel Folau became the centre of our free speech debate. Patrick Mullins’ The Trials of Portnoy: How Penguin Brought Down Australia’s Censorship System, recounts the pervasive literary censorship of our puritanical past, brought to an abrupt end with Portnoy’s Complaint and Penguin’s brave decision to publish and be damned. Malcolm and Patrick discuss our history of censorship and today’s fraught debate around bigotry and cancel culture.

Chair: David Marr

West Stage 5pm

POETRY READINGS
Including: Geoff Goodfellow Julie Janson Nardi Simpson and Jessie Tu
Join Australian Book Review’s Editor and poet Peter Rose for an hour of poetry reading, featuring a line-up of celebrated poets drawn from Writers’ Week guests and South Australia’s vast pool of poetic talent. Including Julie Janson, Jessie Tu, Nardi Simpson and Adelaide’s own legendary street poet, Geoff Goodfellow.

Chair: Peter Rose

West Stage 6:30pm

UNSTABLE GROUND
Hosted by Jo Dyer
Randa Abdel-Fattah, Robbie Arnott, Durkhanai Ayubi, Geoff Goodfellow, Andrew Kwong, Mirandi Riwoe and Nardi Simpson
As the sun sets, the heat recedes and work is done for the day, the bar is open and the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden is the place to be as some of Writers’ Week favourite guests, Randa Abdel-Fattah, Robbie Arnott, Durkhanai Ayubi, Geoff Goddfellow, Andrew Kwong, Mirandi Riwoe and Nardi Simpson, embrace the informality of our Twilight Talks and reveal their unfiltered selves. An all-Australian, all-star line-up have ten minutes to contemplate their lives, passions, preoccupations and the hell of a year we’ve all just endured as they reflect on the challenge of trying to stay balanced while standing on Unstable Ground.

Wednesday 
3rd March

East Stage 9:30am

THE RIVER RUNS DRY
Richard Beasley, Grant Rigney and Margaret Simons
The Murray-Darling Basin is dying. Despite its catastrophic plight, and the devastating findings of the South Australian Royal Commission, policy is corrupted, neglected or ignored. Richard Beasley draws on his experience as Counsel Assisting the Royal Commission in Dead in the Water, a book that is simultaneously hilarious and deadly serious, and very, very angry. Margaret Simons’ celebrated Quarterly Essay, Cry Me A River (QE77), is both a portrait and explanation of our current predicament. Grant Rigney is the Director of the Murray Lower Darling Rivers Indigenous Nations.

Chair: Natasha Mitchell

West Stage 9:30am

QUIVERING ON THE CUSP
Naoise Dolan LIVE STREAMED FROM DUBLIN, IRELAND and Jessie Tu
Naoise Dolan and Jessie Tu were responsible for two of the most bracing, exciting debuts of 2020. Naoise’s Exciting Times and Jessie’s A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing are witty, bold accounts of the power dynamics of sex and relationships in the twenty-first century, with heroines that deadpan their way through relationships – transactional, erotic and romantic – as they navigate love, vulnerability and ambition and muster the courage to find their true selves.

Chair: Jo Case 
Supported by Culture Ireland
East Stage 10:45am

INFINITE SPLENDOURS
Sofie Laguna
Gifted youngster Lawrence enjoys an idyllic childhood in regional Victoria, where he lives with his widowed mother and young brother at the foot of the Grampians. After taking his first painting class, he dives obsessively into an exhilarating world of light, colour and art, and thrives. But his world is shattered by the arrival of an interloper, and a devastating incident that follows. Sofie Laguna’s extraordinary and compassionate new book, Infinite Splendours, is a luminous and heartbreaking meditation on art, trauma, and innocence lost.

Chair: Linda Jaivin

West Stage 10:45am

ONE BRIGHT MOON
Andrew Kwong
Andrew Kwong’s quietly gripping memoir takes us deep into Maoist China and the stark human cost of the Great Leap Forward. With parents from the intellectual class, Andrew’s innocence, optimism and love of the Communist Party is undercut by the persecution his family suffers under Mao’s regime. One Bright Moon is a powerful account of resilience, family and starting anew, as, after years of struggle, Andrew makes a daring escape to ultimately become a doctor in Australia, from where he works to reunite his family.

Chair: Gabrielle Chan

East Stage 12pm

THE PALACE LETTERS
Jenny Hocking
Distinguished historian Jenny Hocking fought for over a decade for access to correspondence between Governor General John Kerr and Buckingham Palace about the sacking of Gough Whitlam. Classified by the Palace as “personal correspondence”, Jenny finally secured their release in June 2020 following a landmark High Court judgment that decreed they were Commonwealth records. In her new book, The Palace Letters, Jenny discusses the implications of the Letters and their release for transparency and accountability in our democratic system, and for Australian democracy itself.

Chair: Mark McKenna

West Stage 12pm

WHAT ARE YOU GOING THROUGH?
Sigrid Nunez LIVE STREAMED FROM NEW YORK, USA 
Sigrid Nunez took twenty-five years to become an overnight success with her seventh book, the National Book Award winning The Friend, the story of a woman mourning the suicide of a close friend with the help of a Great Dane. Its narrator returns in her new book, What Are You Going Through? with another intimate spare story in which she helps her friend prepare for the end after a cancer diagnosis. A beautiful meditation on friendship, mortality and grief infused with generosity and wit.

Chair: Claire Nichols

East Stage 1:15pm

TWILIGHT OF DEMOCRACY 
THE FAILURE OF POLITICS AND THE PARTING OF FRIENDS
Anne Applebaum LIVE STREAMED FROM WASHINGTON DC, USA
Pulitzer prize-winning author and historian Anne Applebaum deconstructs the psychology and motivations of today’s crazed conspiracy theorists and populists in Twilight of Democracy, an incisive examination of the longstanding struggle between democracy and dictatorship. Drawing on experience and high-level relationships forged across Europe and America, and an exemplary understanding of contemporary and historical politics, Twilight of Democracy is a confronting and illuminating analysis of a polarised world.

Chair: Sally Warhaft

West Stage 1:15pm

THE TOLSTOY ESTATE
Steven Conte
Winner of the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for his debut novel, The Zookeeper’s War, Steven Conte returns to World War II for his stunning new book, The Tolstoy Estate. It is 1941 and Hitler has repeated Napoleon’s fatal misstep of invading Russia. In winter. A German medical unit find themselves quartered at Yasnaya Polyana, the ancestral estate of Tolstoy, where surgeon Paul Bauer becomes enthralled by its Director and the legacy of the great Tolstoy that surrounds them. An epic, ambitious tale of love, war and literature.

Chair: Ashley Hay

East Stage 2:30pm

LAND OF MATES AND FAVOURS
AUSTRALIA’S CRONY CAPITALISM
Richard Denniss, Cameron Murray and Marian Wilkinson
Does Australia have a problem with rent-seekers, well-connected insiders who have their snouts firmly in the public trough, enriching themselves and their mates at the expense of the rest of us? Why is it that the majority of our Rich-Listers accrued their wealth from favourable treatment in heavily regulated industries? The Australia Institute’s Chief Economist Richard Denniss, co-author of Games of Mates (with Paul Frijters), Cameron Murray and Marian Wilkinson (The Carbon Club) examine the cosy club of political insiders and this particularly Australian way to make money.

Chair: Michael West

West Stage 2:30pm

THE POROUS PRESENT 
LIFE, LOVE AND LEGACIES
Nardi Simpson and Karen Wyld
In Karen Wyld’s Where the Fruit Falls, Brigid sets off on an epic journey with her twin babies, one white and one black, searching for lost love. Nardi Simpson’s Song of the Crocodile introduces us to the Billymil family, living with its community on the fringes of Darnmoor, “the Gateway to Happiness”. Both novels are award winning, immersive stories of family, Country and history that powerfully weave rich narratives and magical realism with the enduring tragic legacy of colonialism.

Chair: Natalie Harkin

West Stage 3:45pm

HAZEL ROWLEY, FELLOWSHIP ADDRESS
MAKING CHARACTERS: BIOGRAPHY AND MEMOIR
Jacqueline Kent
In this year’s lecture in memory of biographer Hazel Rowley, Jacqueline Kent, biographer of Vida Goldstein, Julia Gillard and Hephzibah Menuhin, turns the spotlight on herself and her brief but passionate relationship with Kenneth Cook, author of the novel Wake in Fright. Jacqueline discusses what happens when you become a character in your own story, and switch from describing others’ lives to tackle your own. 
The announcement of the recipient of the 2021 Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship will follow.

East Stage 3:45pm

CITY SERIES: A DOUBLE EVENT
Matthew Condon, Sophie Cunningham, Paul Daley, Delia Falconer, Kerryn Goldsworthy, Tess Lea, Peter Timms, David Whish-Wilson
To celebrate the tenth anniversary of the iconic City Series and the publication of updated versions on our eight capital cities, this special double event chaired by the infinitely expert George Megalogenis examines what makes each of our cities special through the eyes of authors who love and know them. As we emerge from the Great Lockdowns of 2020, when we were forced to stay home, and individual State borders slammed shut one after the other, it seems particularly appropriate to look at the personality of each capital – their skylines, cultures, architecture, and natural surrounds – and explore how they have changed over the last decade, and how they shape, excite, attract or infuriate their residents. First we hear from Kerryn Goldsworthy (Adelaide), Sophie Cunningham (Melbourne), David Whish-Wilson (Perth) and Peter Timms (Hobart), and then Delia Falconer (Sydney), Matthew Condon (Brisbane), Paul Daley (Canberra) and Tess Lea (Darwin), before all authors return to the stage for questions from the audience and each other. Don’t miss this literary and cultural audit of the state of our cities, and their relationship to each other and the country

Chair: George Megalogenis
Duration: 2 hrs

West Stage 5pm

COMING OF AGE IN THE WAR ON TERROR
Randa Abdel-Fattah
The shocking image of planes smashing into the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001 was a defining moment in the modern era. We now have a generation – Muslim and non-Muslim – who have grown up in the shadow of the War on Terror, with its associated Islamophobia, surveillance and suspicion. In her ambitious, rigorous and deeply compassionate new book, Coming of Age in the War on Terror, Randa Abdel-Fattah hears from the young people most affected by our polarised politics, providing important insight into their resilience, humour and heartbreak.

Chair: Sami Shah

Thursday 
4th March

East Stage 9:30am

REFRAMING THE CLASSICS
Natalie Haynes LIVE STREAMED FROM LONDON, UK
With her acclaimed BBC radio series just commissioned for a seventh series, broadcaster, author, stand up comedian and classicist Natalie Haynes is celebrated for taking those pillars of our cultural understanding, the Greek myths, and retelling them from the female perspective. Her novel, A Thousand Ships, centres Creusa’s experience of the Trojan War and in her most recent book, the eloquent and witty essay collection Pandora’s Jar, Natalie “gives voice to the women, girls and goddesses who, for so long, have been silent.”

Chair: Tom Wright

West Stage 9:30am

RIDING THE WAVE
Vivian Pham and Andrew Pippos
In Andrew Pippos’ lively debut Lucky’s, his eponymous soldier stays in Sydney after World War II to forge a life amongst the Greek diaspora and the homey diners they establish on each corner, to which he adds with a string of initially successful franchises. The Coconut Children is an evocative coming of age story of a schoolgirl and a community, written in and about contemporary Cabramatta by the prodigiously talented 19 year-old Vivian Pham. These compelling, vibrant stories remind us how Australia is shaped and lifted by the waves of immigration that reach our shores.

Chair: Lur Alghurabi

East Stage 10:45am

THERE GOES THE NEIGHBOURHOOD
Chongyi Feng and  Geoff Raby
Insults flying via Twitter, lobsters dying on the tarmac in Shanghai, Ministers’ phone calls snubbed by their counterparts: how has our relationship with China come to this? Former Australian Ambassador to China Geoff Raby explores China’s newly assertive place in the world and the implications for Australia in his new book, China’s Grand Strategy and Australia’s Future in the New Global Order. He is joined by Chongyi Feng to discuss what – if anything – can be done to repair this critical geopolitical and economic relationship.

Chair: Richard McGregor

West Stage 10:45am

A BURNING
Megha Majumdar
Megha Majumdar’s electric novel, A Burning, is the taut, riveting tale of three individuals whose lives become entangled in the aftermath of an horrific terrorist attack in Kolkata. Each have ambitions for themselves – Jivan, clawing her way out of the slum in which she lives, Lovely, the hijra intent on becoming a star, and PT Sir, a PE teacher who stumbles into right-wing political activism. But after a careless Facebook post, Jivan finds herself caught up in India’s corrupt legal system and her life hangs in the balance.

Chair: Linda Jaivin

East Stage 12pm

MAN OF MYSTERY
Garry Disher
Garry Disher is one of Australia’s most acclaimed crime writers. He published his first book in 1981 and has gone on to publish over fifty titles including non-fiction, children and YA books, short story collections and, most notably, crime fiction. He is the recipient of many awards across Australia and Europe, including the Ned Kelly Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018, and his latest book is Consolation, the third featuring South Australian rural policeman Constable Paul Hirschhausen, aka Hirsch. Garry sits down with David Sly to discuss his prolific and celebrated writing career.

Chair: David Sly

West Stage 12pm

THE CARBON CLUB
Marian Wilkinson 
Why is it that, despite overwhelming popular support for action on Climate Change, Australia has been a policy laggard in this area? One of Australia’s most respected investigative journalists Marian Wilkinson tells all in The Carbon Club. Revealing the network of powerful climate change sceptics, politicians and business leaders who have sought to control Australia’s climate policy, and with extraordinary access to players from all sides, Marian has written a riveting and disturbing account of the self-interest and betrayal behind Australia’s criminally poor response to Climate Change.

Chair: Royce Kurmelovs

East Stage 1:15pm

WHAT JUST HAPPENED?
Danielle Celermajer, Gabrielle Chan and Richard McGregor
It began with Australia ablaze and ended with a scramble to avoid the latest cluster of the clusterf*** that was COVID-19. In between were floods, flailing democracies, dodged accountabilities, and a weird fugue that swallowed April – July. It’s no wonder we emerged from 2020 wondering: “What just happened?”. Sophie Cunningham’s Fire Flood Plague pondered just that. She facilitates a conversation with contributors Richard McGregor and Gabrielle Chan, joined by Danielle Celermajer, whose essay collection Summertime: Reflections on a Vanishing Future is an an urgent elegy for looming loss.

Chair: Sophie Cunningham

West Stage 1:15pm

THE LABYRINTH
Amanda Lohrey
The Labyrinth explores how one survives in the wake of an open-ended disaster. Erica Marsden moves across the country to be within driving distance of the jail that houses her son, convicted of a terrible crime. Investigating ideas of nature and art, men and women, motherhood and home, this wise and human story begins with an epigraph: “The cure to many ills, noted Jung, is to build something”, and follows Erica as she resolves to build a labyrinth, both a hands-on project to distract, and a shape for her psychic journey.

Chair: Kerryn Goldsworthy

East Stage 2:30pm

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
Emma Dawson, Richard Denniss and Gideon Haigh
Even before we emerged blinking from Iso and the year that was 2020, we started to ask, “What Happens Next?”. Executive Director of Per Capita Emma Dawson coedited an anthology with this title, exploring how we can ensure we learn the right lessons from the COVID crisis. She is joined by Chief Economist of the Australia Institute Richard Denniss and Gideon Haigh, whose book, The Momentous, Uneventful Day: a requiem for the office looks at the implications 2020’s flight from the office has had on our working lives.

Chair: Paul Barclay

West Stage 2:30pm

OUR SHADOWS
Gail Jones
Gail Jones delivers another quiet masterpiece with Our Shadows. After the painful death of her husband, Frances becomes determined to excavate the past, and returns to Kalgoorlie, where she and her sister Nell were raised by their grandparents after their mother died in childbirth and father fled in grief and confusion. A story of three generations across Ireland and Australia, with the real life story of the man who first discovered gold in Kalgoorlie, Paddy Hannan, woven in, Our Shadows is a beautiful meditation on grief, family and identity.

Chair: Cath Kenneally

East Stage 3:45pm

LEADING LADY 
LOWITJA’S LEGACY
Stuart Rintoul
Described by Noel Pearson as “the most outstanding Aboriginal leader of the contemporary era”, Lowitja O’Donoghue navigated an early life of loss, racism and servitude to become the first Chair of Australia’s best attempt to facilitate self-determination for its Indigenous peoples, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. She was a lead negotiator on the Native Title Act with Paul Keating, who later called her a “leader with an unfailing instinct for enlargement”. Stuart Rintoul’s impressive, authorised biography of this important Australian leader is informed by meticulous research and a strong personal relationship with his subject.

Chair: Simone Tur

West Stage 3:45pm

GRIFFITH REVIEW 71
REMAKING THE BALANCE
Gabrielle Chan, Nardi Simpson and Clare Wright
Was 2020 a year of rupture that will change what we do with what we have? How will it impact on our ideas of access and abundance, of security and agency? How will it alter the way we think about resources – tangible and intangible; animal, vegetable, mineral, more? Contributors Nardi Simpson, Clare Wright and Gabrielle Chan explore new ideas of trade and exchange, sustainability and story, in Griffith Review 71: Remaking the Balance, in conversation with Editor Ashley Hay.

Chair: Ashley Hay

East Stage 5pm

THE LONELY CENTURY 
COMING TOGETHER IN A WORLD THAT’S PULLING APART 
Noreena Hertz LIVE STREAMED FROM LONDON, UK
Described by The Observer as one of the “world’s leading thinkers”, global economist Noreena Hertz dissects the contemporary epidemic of loneliness in The Lonely Century. This meticulously researched and highly readable book describes how we have become alienated from each other, and analyses the structures, influences and trends that cause and exacerbate our isolation. The Lonely Century is an urgent message about one of the most far-reaching issues of our time.

Chair: Natasha Cica

West Stage 5pm

LOST WOMEN OF HISTORY
Danielle Clode and Judith Hoare 
When Danielle Clode set out to research In Search of the Woman Who Sailed the World, about the first woman to circumnavigate the earth, she discovered scant details of an impoverished French peasant who embarked on her voyage disguised as a man. Judith Hoare’s The Woman Who Cracked the Anxiety Code is the overdue account of Australian Dr Claire Weekes, whose pioneering work on anxiety and depression still forms the basis of much contemporary treatment. Danielle and Judith reflect on these groundbreaking but overlooked women, and why women are written out of history. 

Chair: Collette Snowden

ACTIVE PURSUIT 
On the Plane Tree Stage

For the first time the Plane Tree Stage will be active all week with the presentation of two new four-event series on Monday 1 and Tuesday 2 March. 

BE THE CHANGE, MONDAY 1ST MARCH
A day of activism and advocacy when you are invited to Be the Change you wish to see in the world. Featuring some of our best known and most effective activists, Be the Change tackles head on those energy-sapping feelings of helplessness and impotence today’s urgent issues can generate. It provides practical and inspiring advice on how to turn frustration into action, and become part of the solution to our world’s myriad urgent problems.

THE BUSINESS OF BEING A WRITER, TUESDAY 2ND MARCH 
Whether you’re a published writer, an aspiring author, or are simply curious to take a behind-the-scenes look at the business of publishing, you won’t want to miss this brand new series. 
Hosted by Fremantle Press Publisher and author of How to be an Author Georgia Richter, this series comprises four panel sessions featuring experienced authors and book industry professionals, packed with information, advice and practical tips about what aspiring writers need to think about when they are not actually writing. 

Plane Tree Stage

Monday 1st March
BE THE CHANGE

12PM
FINDING HOPE
Jess Scully

Developing a clear vision, a fairer world, a utopia, is done slowly, over time, with care, commitment, courage and creativity. Jess Scully has travelled the world, exploring the many ways people of imagination are grasping the mettle to reshape our world into a fairer and more sustainable place. How can we help? In Glimpses of Utopia, Jess counts the ways.

Chair: Hannah Critchlow

1:15PM
MARSHALLING THE TROOPS
Jean Hinchliffe and Sally Rugg

Effecting change can be hard, requiring effort, energy and organisation. Sally Rugg (How Powerful We Are) demonstrated all these, and no small degree of elan, when she assumed a leading role in the successful campaign for marriage equality. Jean Hinchliffe (Lead the Way) is following in her impressive footsteps as leader of the School Strikes 4 Climate. These two inspiring leaders discuss the power of taking action.

Chair: Sophie Cunningham

2:30pm
SEEING IT, BEING IT
Briggs

Musician, writer, author, activist, cultural commentator and all-round powerhouse, Briggs speaks truth to power in a myriad of poetic, hilarious, high impact ways. His latest project is a celebration of Aboriginal excellence, children’s book Our Home, Our Heartbeat. He talks about the many avenues of his activism, and the inspiration he provides for and draws from the next generation of Black leaders.

Chair: Karen Wyld
3:45pm
CLIMATE
CHANGING MINDS AND TAKING ACTION
Rebecca Huntley and Jonica Newby

Rebecca Huntley (How to Talk About Climate Change in a Way That Makes a Difference) and Jonica Newby (Beyond Climate Grief) discuss ways to shake off ennui and/or exit the echo chamber to effect change on the most pressing issue of our time, the climate crisis. These two leading thinkers offer a way to move beyond our polarised debate and create understanding and incite action.

Chair: Linda Jaivin

ABC Radio Adelaide
ABC Adelaide’s Sonya Feldhoff will be broadcasting live from the the Plane Tree Stage in the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden on selected afternoons of Adelaide Writers’ Week. Subscribe to the ABC Radio Adelaide newsletter for
live broadcast updates, station news and special events.

Plane Tree Stage

Tuesday 2nd March
THE BUSINESS OF BEING A WRITER
Hosted by Georgia Richter

12pm
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A WRITER & BOOKSELLER

How much work does a bestselling author need to do to promote their book? What do they wish they had known about promotion that they have learned along the way? What exactly is it that a bookseller does? And how can new writers forge a great relationship with their local, busy bookseller to aid in the promotion of their book? Get behind the scenes and behind the counter with bestselling author Craig Silvey and Dymocks and Imprints booksellers Mandy Macky and Jason Lake.

1:15pm
ON THE ROAD TO PUBLICATION

When is a manuscript ready to submit? Do you need an agent or should you go straight to the publisher? How to best present your work and choose the destination for submission? And how do you make yourself stand out in the pack? Get insider tips from agents and publishers on preparing your manuscript for publication with agent and publicist Brendan Fredericks, publishers Michael Bollen (Wakefield Press) and Lex Hirst (Pantera Press), and author David Whish-Wilson.

2:30pm
YOUR BOOK AND YOUR BRAND 
MARKETING AND SOCIAL MEDIA

When should you start to think about your author brand? How are you going to promote your message and when should you connect with your audience? Featuring Allen & Unwin Publicity Director Peri Wilson and best-selling author Davina Bell, this panel contains practical tips on all the ins and outs of promotion, including creating and curating a brand, time-management, self-promotion and working with an in-house marketing team.

3:45pm
SELFPUBLISHING 
VIABLE OR VANITY?

When should you choose self-publication over publication? What does a selfpublishing writer need to know about production, printing, design, promotion and distribution – and which path is right for you?  Get the nuts and bolts of self-publication with Deborah Lee of Ingram Spark and author Maria Lewis, who has both self-published and been commissioned by a major publishing house.

Supported by the Ingram Content Group

The Business of Being a Writer is presented in partnership with Fremantle Press.

Live Streaming
Monday 1st – Thursday 4th March
Streamed from the East Stage

Thanks to Office for Ageing Well and Seniors Card, we are able to bring Writers’ Week closer to those who can’t join us in the Garden and live stream selected sessions from the East Stage across four days. Live streaming is open to libraries, schools, retirement villages and community centres across the state and all the facility needs is broadband access and the technology to present it. Remote audience members can also ask questions via Twitter or email.

PARTICIPATING ORGANISATIONS 

Aldinga Library, Barmera Library, Barossa Council Public Library, Blackwood Library, Brighton Library, Burnside Library, City Library, Clare and Gilbert Valleys Library Service, Coober Pedy School Community Library, Cove Civic Centre, Coventry Library, Findon Library, Gawler Public Library, Glenelg Library, Goolwa Library, Henley Library, Hub Library, Light and Regional Public Library Service, Millicent Public Library, Mitcham Library, Moonta Community Library, Mount Gambier Library, Murray Bridge Library, Noarlunga Library, Park Holme Library, Payneham Library, Penola School Community Library, Port Broughton School and Community Library, Port Pirie Library, Prospect Library, Seaford Library, State Library of South Australia, Stirling Library, St Peters Library, Tea Tree Gully Library, Torrens Valley Community Centre, Victor Harbor Library, Walkerville Library, West Torrens Library Service, Willunga Library, Woodcroft Library, Woodside Library, Woodville Library, Yankalilla Library, Ashbrook Apartments, Acacia Park Villages, Avista Glenelg, Brighton Dunes Retirement Village, Clarence Park Community Centre, Fullarton Park Community Centre, Goodwood Community Centre, Kalyra Bellevue Heights Village, Kangaroo Island Council, Living Choice Fullarton, Netley Grove, Norfolk Estate, Pasadena Village, Plympton Mews, The Parks Lifestyle Retirement Village, The Summit Community Centre, U City Retirement Residences, Unley Community Centre, Vailima Gardens Retirement Village, Victoria Grove Estate.

Visit adelaidefestival.com.au for a complete list of participating organisations. For more information, please contact the venue. If you manage a venue and you want to sign up or request technical information, please contact Kvitka Becker kbecker@adelaidefestival.com.au

Kids’ Day 
Saturday 27th February
9am – 3:15pm 
Ages 2 – 12 

Join us for a jam-packed program designed for the youngest of book readers. 

TORRENS TENT 

Kids' Day features an all-Australian line-up of some of the brightest names in children’s literature. Be part of a magical day of stories and more as writers, illustrators and performers take over the Torrens Tent to enliven and excite our young book lovers. Don’t miss Story Trove’s inventive world of story-telling through live performance and creative play. 

TWINING ARTS 

Deb and the Twining Arts team are back with fun free workshops in the AWW Kids Studio. Taking inspiration from the books in the Torrens Tent you can make a badge showcasing your unique super power, print using the Twining Arts printing press, paint a beautiful Australian landscape, or help make our giant mural of Australia. And the very little artists can make an AWW bookmark! 

Bookings available on the day. 

TORRENS TENT

9.30am Welcome with MC Sam McMahon 
9.45am My Favourite Story with Ursula Dubosarsky 
10.00am Story Trove - Howl by Kat Patrick & Evie Barrow (illus.) 
10.30am Ronojoy Ghosh 

BREAK 

11.30am Story Trove - The Giant and The Sea by Trent Jamieson & Rovina Cai 
12.00pm Briggs 
12.30pm Davina Bell & Allison Colpoys 

BREAK

2.00pm My Favourite Story with Davina Bell 
2.15pm Story Trove - Howl by Kat Patrick & Evie Barrow (illus.) 
2.45pm Nicole Stewart – Amazing Places 
3.00pm A Fractured Fairytale with R.A. Spratt 

Middle & YA Readers’ Day 
Sun 28th February

10am
TORRENS TENT
R.A. SPRATT’S SUPER SLEUTHS 
R.A. Spratt 

R.A. Spratt is on the case with her dual detecting series The Peski Kids and Friday Barnes: Girl Detective! Avid fans can follow the clues and investigate the evidence when R.A. joins us to disclose the inner workings of Currawong super sleuths Joe, Fin, April Peski and their partner in crime Loretta. Not to be outdone, the great powers of observation and superior mind of intrepid girl detective Friday Barnes will also be revealed. 

11am
TORRENS TENT
THE END OF THE WORLD IS BIGGER THAN LOVE
Davina Bell

World building in the novel is an art, transporting readers to incredible yet somehow recognisable environments. Enter Davina Bell’s debut The End of the World is Bigger than Love, a gloriously unique and immersive novel that centres on Summer and Winter, 15-year- old twins. Their extraordinary closeness helps them navigate the constant changes wrought by their father and a world on the brink of environmental and social collapse. Join Davina Bell for an insight into the ideas central to her first YA novel.

12pm
TORRENS TENT 
NEW REALITIES 
James Bradley, Jess Scully and Sean Williams 

In a time of crisis what are the ways forward? What possibilities have been created by science, community and technology? A stellar line up of contemporary authors, including Sydney’s Deputy Lord Mayor Jess Scully (Glimpses of Utopia), 
James Bradley (The Ghost Species) and Sean Williams (Twinmaker) as they discuss visions of the future and imagine new realities. 

1pm
TORRENS TENT
MONUMENTS MASH UP 
Will Kostakis 
Drawing on his Greek heritage, Will Kostakis subverts the norm with the duology Monuments and Rebel Gods juxtaposing contemporary Sydney teenagers, with ancient gods and time slips. Hear Will reflect on his influences and ideas when writing this “page-turning adventure fiction peppered with humour, romance and high- stakes.” (Sydney Morning Herald) 

2pm
TORRENS TENT
IN CONVERSATION WITH
Vikki Wakefield 
When Vikki Wakefield’s This is How We Change the Ending won the 2020 CBCA’s Award for Book of the Year: Older Readers, it cemented her reputation as an author of incredible power and empathy. Join moderator Clare Sawyer to find out why and how Vikki can write “from inside a teen boys head, illuminating his thoughts and words with searing understanding and empathy, along with hints of hope.” (The Australian) 

3pm
TORRENS TENT
WORD SPY
Ursula Dubosarsky
Match wits with the Word Spy! Join the Australian Children’s Laureate for 2021, Ursula Dubosarsky (aka The Word Spy) for an entertaining quiz for children about the mysteries and wonders of WORDS and all things wordy. 
Prizes for correct answers!

Microstory Competition
For writers 18 and under
For more information on how to enter, visit 
adelaidefestival.com.au/microstory-comp 
Winner announced at 11am Sunday 28 Feb on the Plane Tree Stage. 
Thanks to Nine News.

Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden
For many years Adelaide Writers’ Week has been held in the precinct of the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden. Since 2012 the garden itself has provided a beautiful setting for Adelaide Writers’ Week events. 

In 1935, a Women’s Centenary Council raised money to fund a memorial for the pioneer women of the State and five members of the council were appointed to form the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Trust. With money raised, a Flying Doctor base was built in Alice Springs and the remainder earmarked for a site to honour South Australian women pioneers. The site behind Government House was provided by the City of Adelaide. 

The garden was conceived by landscape gardener Elsie Cornish and is one of the earliest examples of landscape design in Adelaide. Melbourne sculptor Ola Cohn created the memorial sculpture, carving the female figure from Waikerie limestone 
to represent the “the spirit of womanhood” and South Australian Government Astronomer George Dodwell designed the sundial. In 1941 Elsie Cornish began planting the gardens and erecting the low brick wall and the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden was opened on 19 April 1941. 

A plaque mounted on the entrance gates lists the founding trustees. 

The garden is maintained by the City of Adelaide who, along with the current trustees, is committed to ensuring its role in South Australia’s history. 

TORRENS PARADE GROUND 

The Parade Ground and Drill Hall were listed on the South Australian Heritage Register on 11 June 1998. We thank Heritage South Australia for their assistance.

Information

COVID-SAFE CHECK-IN

Adelaide Writers’ Week sessions held in the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden are free however all patrons will be required to do a COVID-Safe Check-In by scanning one of the QR codes displayed around the Garden. 

GETTING THERE

The Adelaide Writers’ Week site will be fenced due to COVID requirements. There will be three entrances - King William Road, Victoria Drive (King William Rd end) and the main path leading from Kintore Avenue into Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden.

PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Bus stop Z1-Z2 travelling from North into Adelaide CBD or stop A2-A3 travelling into the Adelaide CBD from the South. 
Stops F1, U1, B1, Y2, W1, D, X1, X2, C1 and C2 are also walking distance. 
A short walk from the Adelaide Railway Station. 
Tram from Glenelg or Adelaide Entertainment Centre, stop at Festival Plaza, Adelaide Railway Station, North Terrace. 

BIKE PARKING

Adelaide Writers’ Week provides bicycle parking on the grass along King William Road and on Torrens Parade Ground.

Access

We make every effort to ensure Adelaide Festival events are accessible to our whole audience. This program is available online at adelaidefestival.com.au which includes audio versions on every session page.

WHEELCHAIR ACCESS

Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden is wheelchair accessible. There is a power recharge station available. 

SIGN INTERPRETING

Visit adelaidefestival.com.au to download an Auslan request form for sessions of your choice.

NATIONAL RELAY SERVICE

Contact the Adelaide Festival through the National Relay Service on 133 677 then 08 8216 4444 or via relayservice.com.au

DISABILITY PARKING

Limited disability parking available at Torrens Parade Grounds. For booking enquiries contact info@adelaidefestival.com.au

ASSISTANCE DOGS WATERING STATION

Available at Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden.

Sustainability
As an iconic event for our community, we want Adelaide Festival to be an exemplar of environmental responsibility and know that we can make a vital and significant contribution to a future that we want our children to inherit. 

We are committed to reducing our impact on the environment and we are proud to become the first major multi-arts festival in Australia to be certified carbon neutral. 

We will consistently measure and reduce our impacts on the environment, while offsetting the remaining carbon emissions involved in presenting our arts festival. 

We are working with our staff, artists, suppliers, crew, volunteers, donors, sponsors and audience to ensure that sustainability is a key focus in everything we do.

Some of the things we are doing to minimise our carbon footprint: 

• In 2020, all waste from outdoor sites was diverted from landfill 

• Where possible we are reusing, repurposing or recycling most of the materials used to present our Festival 

• We provide bike parking at our outdoor venues 

This year, we are offsetting all of our carbon emissions, including all travel and accommodation associated with the Festival.

PLEASE JOIN US TO HELP REDUCE OUR IMPACT

Walk or ride to events if you can
Whenever possible, take public transport, for more info visit adelaidemetro.com.au
Carpool when you can

Say no to single-use plastic, bring your own drinking containers
Use the three bin system provided in our venues

The Literati 
Adelaide Writers’ Week Donor Circle
Adelaide Writers’ Week is an inspiring event when authors from around the globe and passionate readers of all ages come together to share insights, thought-provoking conversations and indulge in all things literary. But with reduced levels of government funding, rising costs, and a desire for constant improvement, we need your help.  
Our long-term commitment to Writers’ Week as a free event comes at a considerable cost. Receiving only limited direct funding and a modest contribution from book sales, philanthropy and foreign governments, the majority (61%) of Writers’ Week costs are underwritten by Adelaide Festival from its budget. With pressures on the Festival’s own budget ever-increasing, we hope to boost direct contributions from our audience and supporters via this donor program.
The Literati supports four main aspects of the Adelaide Writers’ Week:
•	Supporting Australian authors 
•	Providing funding for the attendance of an international author
•	Encouraging young readers
•	Keeping it free!
For more information please contact Philanthropy Manager Bernadette Woods, bwoods@adelaidefestival.com.au or on 8216 4478

THANK YOU TO OUR DONORS
Anna Baillie-Karas, Eva Chin, Francene Connor, Ross Dillon & Sue Dillon, Alexandra Dimos & Andrew Nunn, Norm Doole & Jane Doole, Kate Duggan, Merry Ewing, Sam Harvey, Amanda Hayes, Nicky Hudson & Geoff Hudson, MUD Literary Club, Robyn Sach, Andrew Saies & Susan Saies, Rick Sarre & Debra Sarre, David Smallacombe & Alison Smallacombe, Lisa Temple & Peter Goldsworthy, Merry Wickes